Imagine my delight to read in the Guardian that there was to be an ‘All new Peter Rabbit for the 21st century’. Brilliant, I thought, a children’s TV show that actually has really strong stories. Then I read the quotes from Chorion chairman Lord Alli and I have to confess that the air turned blue as I’ve rarely read such dumb comments.

What Lord Alli and Chorion mean by ‘updating’ is apparently dumbing them down to suit the lowest common denominator. All they are doing is taking Beatrice Potter’s fantastic characters such as Peter Rabbit and Tom Kitten and creating new and ‘appropriate’ storylines. According to Alli this means: “Peter Rabbit’s father being caught by the farmer and being baked into a pie is not going to be our first episode. We’ll be skipping over some chapters.”

So there you have it, Chorion is planning to make an anaemic and pointless show that will have no resonance whatsoever with children or parents who love Beatrix Potter’s beautiful tales and characters.

Some people thought that the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 outlawed ghost blogs. They don’t. They outlaw fake blogs, which are a totally different issue. Fake blogs are where a brand or agency create a blog that that appears to be independent or from a customer, when in fact it is being written by them.

A ghost blog is where a blog is transparently from the company or organisation, but where the posts have been written by someone other than the person identified as the author. Neville Hobson sparked the debate by stating that ghost writing a blog post was inherently wrong. Some in the audience thought it was OK and likened it to a speech being written for a politician and that people thought was was acceptable and therefore a blog post could also be ghosted. Neville’s argument (I paraphrase) was that a blog post was personal and therefore couldn’t be ghosted.

I’m a realist, not an absolutist. The politician’s speech analogy is a good one, because it actually helps to prove that ghosting can be acceptable. In reality the substance of most political speeches are actually written by the politicians. A good politician will brief a trusted staffer to write the actual words of the speech, but the ideas, tone of voice, emotion and meaning are all the politician’s very own. Step one is the politician, step two is the writer, step three is the politician polishing the writer’s work.

You can quite legitimately create a blog post in exactly the same way. The reality in many companies and organisations is that there are lots of people who only half want to blog. They want to do it, but won’t/don’t because of barriers such as a lack of time, insecurity about their writing ability, worries they can’t think of enough topics etc. That’s where the in-house public relations team or external PR consultancy can help. They can work with an author to create a post that the by-lined author is happy with. That might mean dictating the copy and the PR person typing it and polishing the prose. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of the post, but can mean turning it into plain English by reducing jargon. Usually, as long as the blog makes it clear that the author had assistance then that’s totally acceptable.

There isn’t just one right way to write a blog. There are hundreds of different approaches that all work, there are also hundreds that don’t. That’s why appropriately experienced public relations people can help an employer or clients to get it right. Unfortunately you too often get the problem of PR people who don’t have the appropriate experience or expertise and then provide bad advice.

Matt Bamford-Bowes, head of social media at MediaCom Beyond Advertising tweeted “it isn’t surprising that companies pay PR teams to maintain blogs. It gives aligned tone of voice and point of view.” I disagree that the role of public relations should be to ensure an “aligned tone of voice and point of view” as that sounds far too much to me like turning it in to corporate or brand speak and the type of thing that marketing people who are used to controlling the message would want to do. If that was the role of the ghostwriter then I’d be opposed to it.

Vikki Chowney was faster off the mark than me and has already blogged about it. In the comments Benjamin Ellis makes a sensible reference to the divide between social media natives and traditional PR/corporate folks:

“It will be a 50:50 split in the big wide world :- social media natives will say “bad bad bad” traditional PR/corporate folks will say “fair game”.

Lots of mature businesses are stuck with “can’t blog won’t blog” senior execs – the temptation for PR folks to ghost blog for them is almost irresistible. That doesn’t make it right of course. The biggest down fall is when the CEO meets a customer and the customer starts to talk to them about what they said in the blog post – big #fail / embarrassment, or if a customer posts a comment and someone else responds as the CEO #biggerfail.”

His example ideally illustrates how PR people shouldn’t crudely simply ghost write a blog, but there are so many other ways we can help clients to blog which legitimately do involve helping to write posts.

In one respect it’s a great example of citizen journalists. Companies have to behave more responsibly because there are so many extra ‘citizen journalists’ watching what they do and ready to expose malpractice.

In reality the reason two national newspaper journalists called me for more information and the Guardian ran it as a diary story is probably because of the number of ministers, MPs, journalists and other PR people who follow me. The papers and unions would still have found out about this without social media. I’d have simply have phoned them to tip them off (waiting until I was somewhere more discrete!)

It would always have been a stupid thing to do to have such a conversation in a public environment like a train carriage (particularly in one that was almost empty and quiet). What social media means is that number of potential witnesses are far more and it is far easier for them to spread the word.

I’ve worked on issues management for client companies who are in the midst of industrial disputes, plant closures and redundancies. As a lifelong Labour Party and trade union member (Unite) I’ve found this isn’t as difficult as you would suspect and it is usually never at conflict with my beliefs. Closures and redundancies are often a necessary evil, but it’s up to the company doing it to decide if they want to do it in a moral and responsible way or an immoral and deceitful way. When I’m providing public relations consultancy it’s to help them do it right and to help ensure that corporate social responsibility is about the way they behave and not simply a publicity stunt.

Jaw jaw is always better than war war. A lesson that the management at Total would do well to learn. Total appears to have managed its relationship with employees, the unions and the media disastrously. It comes across as an arrogant, foreign owned company attacking and undermining the rights of British workers. I suspect Total isn’t as bad as it appears to be, but it’s doing a terrible job of explaining its case and indiscrete, (and one would therefore assume badly trained) executives like the two I heard don’t do anything to help its case.

There are several ways for you to take part:

We’re using Kyte to live stream the webcast on the Sony Ericsson GreenHeart website. You can use Kyte’s live chat facility to ask questions and the panel will answer as many as they can. If you want to be more involved then you can even embed Sony Ericsson’s Kyte channel on your own blog, website Facebook etc (just click on Get & Share).

You can follow GreenHeart on Twitter, we’ll be tweeting the highlights of the webcast and you can also tweet your questions and comments to @SEGreenHeart or use the hashtag #greenheart.

Finally, as you’d expect from a mobile phone company, you can also take part by phone using Ipadio! Just call +44 20 3384 2144 (it’s a standard UK number so if you’re calling from outside the UK, there may be extra charges) and enter the pin number 2344. You’ll then be streamed live onto the Sony Ericsson GreenHeart website.

Usual disclaimer, Sony Ericsson is a client of Wolfstar.

It’s hard to reply in 140 characters so my answer of “@jamestutt @derekdraper is new to this and on a very public learning curve, his intention is right (I’ve talked to him), and will get better” didn’t really do the question justice.

Derek Draper’s initiative has come in for a lot of flack from bloggers across the political spectrum, including the A-list Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes (both of whom I’ve met and respect, despite our political differences). I’m not going to single out individuals to dissect and rebut their criticisms, but instead make some general points.

Yes, the Labour Party is very late to this party. But so what, so are most big companies and organisations? The very factors that make social media easy for individuals can create enormous challenges for private, public and voluntary sector enterprises.

It’s all very well for the social media evangelists and the blogging glitterati to get all hot under the collar about “this is the proper way to do social media” and “you must respect the netiquette”, but that’s not how the real world works. Netiquette isn’t set in stone and is constantly changing and adapting to suit the needs of the majority. A good example of this is the number of Twitter early adopters who aren’t entirely happy about the general population invading their private playground and breaking the rules.

Today it’s essential that organisations incorporate social media and online digital communications into the core of their corporate communications strategy. However, that doesn’t mean ditching everything else in favour of the laissez-faire of “you can’t control the message” blogosphere. It’s very easy to talk about how “markets are conversations”, but very different to actually change age-old structures to do something about it.

What we tell all of our clients is that the most important step is to acknowledge the need for change and then identify ways (however tiny) of achieving it. It’s not always possible for a brand (in this case the Labour Party) to “do” social media perfectly. That doesn’t mean to say they shouldn’t do it.

That’s exactly what Derek Draper is doing with LabourList. It isn’t perfect and never will be, but it is and will continually improve, that’s the point. Many of those throwing out criticisms are doing so out of naivety, ignorance or prejudice. It’s ridiculous to think that the party of government can learn about, adapt and respond rapidly to the changes in society brought about by the online world. The new Obama administration has the advantage of being able to do this as part of an opposition campaign that has made the transition to government.

It’s also important to realise that LabourList isn’t intended just for hard-core political bloggers. Far more important is to engage with the far larger number of people online who care about how the country is run and want to see how public services such as health and education can be improved. They don’t care about many of the criticisms of the hard-core bloggers, they just want an opportunity to engage in lively debate with people who care about the same things they do.

Inspired by this I’ve come up with my top 10 ways how not to choose a social media consultant (actually it’s 11 as I couldn’t edit it down to ten!):

1. They describe themselves as an expert. This space is so new and changing so rapidly it’s impossible to be an expert, at Wolfstar we only claim to be ahead of the curve.
2. They think advertising, marketing and public relations are ‘dead’ and that online is where it’s all happening. Traditional communications isn’t going anywhere, but equally you can’t afford to ignore online and new media.
3. The first thing they talk about isn’t how to integrate social media into overall corporate communications strategy or public relations plan. Just like traditional public relations or marketing communications you’ve got to focus on the business objectives and what communications can do to achieve them.
4. The first thing they advise is you should start a blog or Facebook group. Focus on the business and what you want to achieve and then think about the tools and the technology.
5. They’ve only been blogging for a year and don’t have many comments or inbound links from other blogs, or much of a personal or corporate presence within other social media and networks. How can they do it for you if they can’t do it for themselves?
6. They equate measurement with evaluation and ROI. Online campaigns and social media are incredibly easy to measure with lots of numbers available, but that’s not the same as evaluating ROI which can be as hard online as it is in ‘real world’ public relations.
7. They tell you how they can help to control your messages in social media and social networks. You can’t control the message online and it’s a myth that you ever controlled it off-line, but you can listen, respond and influence.
8. They don’t have a track record of success in both online and traditional public relations for clients and themselves. Lots of PR, advertising and digital agencies are claiming social media as a service, but that doesn’t mean they can do.
9. They talk about talking to or at people rather than with people. It’s a conversation you can’t jump in and interject your message, you’ve got to participate and think about what you can bring rather than what you can get.
10. They promise you quick results and instant success. Online, social media and social networks are all representative of how society and the economy is changing, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul.
11. They think social media is new. It isn’t, it’s simply about relationships, which is why it’s called public relations and not advertising or digital marketing.

That’s my 10 11, please feel free to leave your ideas in the comments.

The first is “Web Puts Dog-Whistle Politics on a Leash” by Ari Melber in The Nation. It proposes that negative ‘dog whistle’ campaign messages designed to subliminally influence voters when disseminated by traditional media are now be analysed and exposed by social media, thus reducing the effectiveness.

The second is a Hitwise Intelligence map showing swing states in the US presidential race. It compares a New York Times electoral map showing polling data of the ‘states in play’ with a Hitwise map of traffic from each state to Obama and McCain’s websites.

In this map, Hitwise is showing representation index for the two candidate sites to indicate likelihood of internet users in each state to visit that website (over 100 means more likely, below 100 means less likely).

In the "tossup" states of Nevada, Missouri and Florida, Obama is leading McCain. In Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina McCain is ahead. Florida is the closest – with Internet users in Florida 2.89% more likely to visit Obama’s website than McCain’s.

Jane Smith at pr.(in a jar) has an interesting post on the good general knowledge skills, or lack of, in the public relations industry. She worries that it might “sound fogey-ish” to complain that “today’s new graduates don’t read much by way of books, for example.”

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man I’m with Jane on this one. There is a distinct lack of general knowledge amongst younger people. I’m not expecting Master Mind levels of general knowledge (I’d lose) but I do expect anyone who works in PR to know things like:

• The names of most government departments and the cabinet minister in charge
• The main characters and storylines from at least some of Shakespeare’s plays
• The names of the ‘top’ six or seven PMs/presidents from around the world
• Key events from UK and world history
• The main characters and storylines from some of the classic British novels (from having read them, not watched the film or TV adaptation)
• Know who some of the world’s great thinkers are and their works from philosophy, economics, politics, sociology etc
• The locations and little bit about most UK cities
• The titles and/or authors of some current ‘hot’ books that are helping to shape society and business – and hopefully to have read some of them, for fun/interest, and not because you’ve tasked with it
• The capitals of most European countries and major countries around the world
• The names of some of the world’s ‘great’ newspapers in major countries

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I’m constantly disappointed by how little some people know. The reason these are important is that for some of these things they are simply important, for others they are more an indication that you are hungry for knowledge about society, politics, economics, government, business, culture etc.

To be really successful in public relations you need to be hungry for knowledge and constantly thirsting to know more. You need to embrace every new client’s industry sector with enthusiasm and immerse yourself in the trends, terminology and practices.

A good grounding in general knowledge is invaluable in business, public relations and your life in general.

The Guardian has very kindly printed my letter in today’s paper:

I’m ashamed that Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of my own union, has made an outrageous personal attack on John Hutton, one of the best cabinet ministers for business and enterprise that Labour has ever had. Hutton isn’t afraid to tackle the real issues and make the difficult and often unpopular decisions that deliver for Britain. Witness his recent announcements on nuclear power, which will do far more to tackle climate change than Cameron’s publicity-seeking bicycle stunts. While Hutton is working to improve and safeguard British workers’ jobs by grappling with the challenges that face UK enterprise, Woodley appears hell bent on returning to the 1970s and 80s.
Stuart Bruce
Wakefield, West Yorkshire